Chimp Congo a sales hit in artistic evolution

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The art world, confusing at the best of times, took another
lurch at Bonhams auction house in London this week.

Amid wild scenes, three paintings by a chimpanzee sold for
£14,400 ($A33,000), more than 20 times their estimate.

In the same sale an Andy Warhol painting and a small Renoir
sculpture attracted so little interest that they had to be
withdrawn.

The chimp daubings are believed to be the first works of art by
a non-human to go under the hammer. But they were executed by no
ordinary chimp. They were painted in the late 1950s by Congo, a
celebrity chimp resident in London Zoo who was hailed as the
Cezanne of the ape world.

Picasso acquired one of Congo's 400 works, Miro swapped two of
his paintings for one of Congo's, and Salvador Dali was so smitten
with the ape's canvases that he declared: "The hand of the
chimpanzee is quasi-human; the hand of Jackson Pollock is totally
animal!"

Congo's work went to Howard Hong, a Los Angeles collector who
described himself as an enthusiast of modern and contemporary
painting. He immediately issued a statement that could have come
from the Dali phrasebook, saying that Congo's painting "represents
the complete evolution of mankind".

Congo became a television celebrity in the late 1950s as the
star of Zootime, an animal program presented from London
Zoo by Desmond Morris, the zoologist and anthropologist.

He became even more of a cause celebre when the Institute of
Contemporary Arts mounted a large exhibition of his work in 1957.
Critics had a field day and debate about the meaning of art raged
furiously.